Personal information managers, such as Microsoft Outlook™, provide calendar, task, and contact management, note taking, journal ability, and e-mail service. It can be used as a stand-alone application but can also operate in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server™ to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, public folders, and meeting time allocation.
Personal information managers commonly include a calendar organizer allowing a person to schedule meetings with multiple people. The manager sends out invitations and invitation updates and allows the person to book enterprise resources, such as meeting rooms, projectors, and the like.
Personal information managers generally have a number of drawbacks. First, managers do not identify existing and/or requested meetings for possible merger. This can be particularly important for organizing meetings with multiple “popular” people. People, such as company directors, team leaders, sales people, and people involved in public relations, are often difficult to get in a meeting together, commonly because they are already booked in other meetings. Second, to protect the owner's privacy and prevent breach of security, managers generally indicate only that a subscriber is “busy” or “available” without indicating what he or she is doing. Third, managers can be poor in permitting users to get added to existing meetings. A user seeking to set up meetings with an individual is notified that they are unavailable without an indication of why or for how long. It is entirely possible that the desired cluster of people already have a confidential meeting scheduled to which the user could be added.